The Conspiracy in Limbo
by forensicsfan
Summary: Pelant seems to have the upper hand, but with everything we know about Booth, Brennan, and the Squints, there is no way they are just sitting back and not putting their genius brains together, especially when he demands that Booth break off his engagement to Brennan. Set at the end of Season 8.sdfza
1. Chapter 1

**The Conspiracy in Limbo**

**Disclaimer:** I don't own them, I didn't create them, and I used to bring them out to play with much more often.

**Author's Note:** I don't know about all of you, but I disliked the way that Season 8 of Bones ended. It seemed contrary to everything that we've learned about the Squints to not find a way to go at Pelant with all of their brain power melded together and beat him at his mind games. So here is my attempt, where Limbo is like their own secret Justice League headquarters.

"You're sure that Limbo has been swept for bugs." Booth narrowed his gaze at Hodgins as they stood in the unidentified bone storage area. If this plan of theirs didn't work, then he wasn't sure how they were going to get the upper hand with Pelant.

"Technology free zone." Hodgins was dead serious. It had been a point of contention years before when Gormagon was alive and using Zach to make dentures from unidentified victims' teeth. But in spite of that, no security cameras were ever installed, and as recently as this morning, Angela had done a covert sweep of the space for any electronic devices. It had become the only place where it appeared that the team could be free to discuss Pelant without worry that someone had found a way to listen in.

Booth was especially nervous about the security of the space. Pelant had pulled a proverbial trump card threatening to kill innocent people if Booth didn't break off the engagement from Bones. He'd done it, but he also knew that he had broken her heart and he didn't think he could live with that. He had to let her know what was going on, risky he knew considering her poor acting skills, but to take down Pelant, they all had to be in on this and this was the only safe place to talk about it. He'd had to set a few things in motion, something he thought was going to take a while, but thankfully had been sped up by him being ambushed and pulled down into this very room by Angela the day before. She had clued Hodgins in and now here they were about to set their Hail Mary into motion.

Hodgins nodded. "I'll go get Dr. B. and the others." He turned on his heels and walked purposefully out of the room.

Booth paced, his fingers worrying the edges of the poker chip he carried with him. He had given up gambling, but this was one he had to take. No one was going to keep him from having a life with Bones, and if Pelant had to die to make that happen, he was mostly okay with that. He'd only been pacing a few minutes when Bones descended into Limbo. He felt his heart catch in his throat, afraid that she would turn around and walk right back out before he had a chance to explain himself. Things between them had been tense and unsettled these last three days. Three of the longest days of his life.

"Booth, what are you doing here?" Brennan quirked an eyebrow. She hadn't expected him at the lab today, and certainly not down here. Based on a conversation she'd just had with Hodgins she had expected to find one of the new squinterns who was supposedly working on identifying remains and had found something needing her immediate expertise.

"We need to talk." His heart skipped a beat as he looked into her eyes.

"You said that a few nights ago." She couldn't mask the hurt in her tone no matter what she'd told him before. She loved Booth and she wanted to marry him. His rejection of her had stung more than she could have imagined.

"Pelant." He took a deep breath as she gave him a quizzical look and continued. "He called me. He said if I didn't break off our engagement he would kill innocent people. He actually described people who were at the park near us the other day. I don't know how he's doing it, but he's watching us all the time. He said if I told you, he would know. But I can't live with myself without you knowing the truth. We've got to find a way to take him down, but we can't do it unless we work together. He's trying to keep us apart…"

A flicker of recognition of the guilt that Booth would bear if he knew his cosmic balance sheet wouldn't balance when he had control to make it otherwise flashed in her eyes. The edges of her mouth curled into a conspiratorial smile. "So we'll be engaged to be engaged until we take the bastard down."

An embrace from Bones had never felt so good as he felt her melt into him. Her lips softened against his and the tension that had been as thick as a brick wall between them dissipated. At least until the sound of someone else coming into the room pulled them apart.

"I take it you two have resolved things and I'll no longer have to kill Booth for breaking your heart." Angela had an amused smirk on her face, glad that a horribly executed diversionary tactic for Pelant benefit had been circumvented. She could only imagine how long this would have gone on if she hadn't confronted Booth.

"Hey, now, let's save any killing you have in you for Pelant." Hodgins was a little too excited about helping with this master plan of taking the evil master mind down. He'd had his opportunity to kill and he hadn't taken it, precisely because he didn't want to become like the man, but there were moments that he'd regretted taking the higher road.

"We're crime solvers, not crime planners." Sweets interjected. He wasn't one hundred percent sure of what was going on, but he had a feeling they were going to need him to keep them out of trouble.

"No one is killing anyone." Booth put on his best federal agent face in spite of the fact that until Pelant was dead they really weren't going to be free of him treating them like they were some kind of damned lab experiment. They key was to take him out in a way that was technically legal so they he wouldn't be able to disappear under some assumed identity only to resurface and cause greater hell for them all.

Cam wasn't buying it. "With all due respect, Seeley, that's exactly what's going to have to happen." She deflected the four stares in her direction. "Not that anyone here would be doing that."

"Now that we're clear about not committing murder." Booth rolled his eyes.

"…of a murderous bastard who deserves whatever the universe has in store for him." Hodgins interjected.

Booth incinerated his words with one look. "We're not here for a revenge fueled murder plot. We're here because all of us together have to be smarter than he is. And if we all put our heads together, we should be able to neutralize him for good." He looked around the room at the faces of the people he trusted most in the world and he could tell that they were all in for good or bad and with his hands on his hips he addressed them. "What do we have in our bag of tricks to take him down once and for all?"


	2. Chapter 2

A week or so had gone by since they had first gathered to conspire to bring down Pelant. Once they'd put their genius brains together, they had begun to formulate a plan, one that they felt needed the experience of someone who had been on the opposite side of the law. And so here they were again in Limbo, enlisting the experience of Max Keenan and hoping that he wouldn't stray outside the confines of their conspiracy in their efforts to take down Pelant. The important thing was to take him out without compromising any of them in the process.

"But isn't the idea to stay off the grid as much as possible?" Booth looked at Max skeptically. He still wasn't complete convinced that they should be involving Max in this whole thing. He was a bit of a wild card, but despite his background he'd garnered their trust, most of the time. At least he knew for certain that he wouldn't knowingly do anything to sell them out to Pelant.

Max was quick to answer. "Like it or not, you're already on the grid, and unless you all disappear like Tempe had to last summer, flooding him with plausible misinformation is going to be far more effective. Besides, if you disappear, you'll never find him."

"Max is right." Angela knew that although Pelant was a genius, he was likely using computer algorhythms to be able to keep tabs on them all. And she had a sneaking suspicion, that the primary target of his sick little game was Booth and Brennan, the rest of them were there for dramatic effect and as a result far more expendable. "He thinks he's smart, and he is, but all of us collectively are smarter than he is." It was strange how Pelant had somehow been able to undermine their ability to function as a team, to short circuit their strength of working together to beat the bad guy.

"Not knowing where he is puts us at a decided disadvantage." Cam would have felt far more secure if she knew exactly where their adversary was. Without that important piece of information, they were going to have to find a way to lure him out into the open before they could take him in. As much as she was all for having Pelant arrested, he knew how to manipulate the system way beyond the average suspect and she felt only slightly guilty that she was hoping he'd be taken out in a blaze of glory so they wouldn't have to deal with a trial.

"I don't think he knows where we are all the time the way we think he does. He knows where we are most of the time because he knows where we live and work, and it is logical that he knows where we shop for groceries and do our banking because he's figured out some way to track us, but he can't anticipate what we're going to do if we stray from that predictable routine, and it's going to take a while before he can detect any sort of pattern if we do. We have to do the unexpected all the while feeding him partial truths." Brennan had learned a thing or two from her father while she'd been on the run. And while going completely off the grid was not going to work to their advantage this time, there was no reason why they couldn't turn the tables on Pelant and out maneuver him.

"I don't think you should rule out that you've got someone in your midst that's working with him." Max was sure that his comment wasn't going to be popular, but given the crimes that Pelant had been able to commit, he didn't believe that he'd ben able to do it all on his own.

"Which is exactly why no one outside of this room knows about what we're up to. No one." Booth made a point of looking directly at Cam before directing at the others. "Not any of the squinterns, not Caroline, not any significant others we don't know about, not anyone."

"I'm very good at not telling secrets." Sweets had certainly kept a whopper from everyone here - he was the only one who knew that Zack hadn't actually participated in murder as Gormagon's apprentice. He hadn't even told Daisy when they'd been together, and he'd told her many things he'd never told another person. He was confident that he wasn't going to be the one who might accidentally leak information.

Hodgins rolled his eyes, he was the king of conspiracy theories. Clearly none of them were going to say a damn thing. "Fine. Alright. Lips are sealed." He might not say anything to anyone outside of Angie, but if he had a chance to take down Pelant by himself, he didn't think he'd pass it up this time.

"I'm serious." Max continued. "Sure this Pelant guy is smart, he might have even had some martial arts training, but trust me, no one accomplishes the kinds of stuff he's been pulling without some help. And when I say help, I don't really mean squinterns." He looked at Booth. "I'm thinking more along the lines of someone inside law enforcement."

All eyes were on Booth.

Booth's jaw was set as he considered Max's words for a moment and then glanced around the room at the rest of the team. "You don't think I haven't thought about that?" He'd thought about it everyday when Bones was on the run. But he really had no solid idea of who around him at the Bureau would be dirty, especially among those he had to trust everyday.

Angela interjected. "Given Pelant's tech savvy abilities, someone could unwittingly help him." He'd used sophisticated low tech means to infiltrate networks through the bar codes in library books and he'd managed to infect the Jeffersonian network by encrypting computer coding in bone knowing it was going to be scanned.

"The guy is scrawny. Don't tell me that you think he has the ability to overpower someone, dissect them and then string them up in some sort of freaky poses." Hodgins knew that a small guy could be strong, but he had nearly choked the man to death. If he was such a mastermind of super strength, super smarts, and super stealth, he would never have let himself be in that sort of position. He was convinced that Max was right and that Pelant had spun his own conspiracy.

"Well then we need to compile of list of people who potentially could be his accomplice, unwitting or not." Brennan liked lists. They could either rule someone out or someone in based on criteria that they felt was pertinent.

"His Achilles heel is his ego." It occurred to Sweets that someone as prideful in his supposed achievements as Pelant was would need to continue to feed his ego through more displays of his genius. He wanted the Squints and Booth to think that he was superior to all of them and as long as he felt they were buying it, he was in the game. If he sensed they were on to him, the game would get extremely dangerous. It was imperative that they be successful in neutralizing him because to entertain the possibility of the other option meant that not everyone standing her right now might be here at the end.

"Maybe we're going after this all wrong." Booth deflected the quizzical looks and continued. "We've assume that Pelant is in this because we exposed him the first time, that he chose to go after us because we just happened to be the team assigned to the case. We're not giving ourselves enough credit. As smart as he is, he's just another bad guy and what's the one thing we do better than anyone else? We catch bad guys."

"We know all that, Seeley, what's your point?" Cam wasn't really sure where he was going with this since he hadn't really made it clear.

"My point is that what if he's connected to some other case we all worked on? What if the reason he's tracking us and trying to make our lives miserable is because in some way he holds us responsible for creating that for someone else?" Booth looked determined. "We need to go back and try and look through as many old case files as possible and see if we can find a connection."

"Booth, that is going to take weeks; maybe even months." Brennan didn't think they had that kind of time before Pelant caught on to what they were doing and found a way to thwart them.

Angela seemed to have an idea of her own as a conspiratorial smile pulled at the corners of her mouth. "I think Booth's on to something, but I don't think we need months to look through all of the old case files, I think we just need to focus on any of those files that were involved when Pelant first hacked into the FBI computer system. I think that's where we're going to find our answer."


	3. Chapter 3

"We've got nothing. He may be working with someone, but there is nothing in the case files that he accessed that give any indication as to who that might be." Angela had hoped that their theory would have turned up something, but it had yielded nothing. Crosschecking the files that Pelant had tapped into when he was originally arrested by the FBI with cases the team at the Jeffersonian had worked on had left them with nothing.

"So we're back to him targeting us because we got involved in his case, and as far as we know he's got any number of unwitting accomplices." Booth had hoped that there was a better answer, but there wasn't one and he hated how this felt. Three more weeks and they were no closer to finding out where Pelant was hiding than they were before.

"What about a money trail?" Hodgins had learned to live without the fortune that Pelant had siphoned off, but every wire transfer had to have some sort of trail, even if it was hidden under some complicated computer coding. It had taken three months to decipher the code that had put Dr. B in a surveillance video that had led to her being framed for murder. It might be difficult to track, but if they could find out exactly where all of that money had gone, it was the one thing that might actually lead them to where Pelant was.

"Money?" Max looked at him curiously. "I thought this was about murder and mayhem." Clearly being late to the game put him at a disadvantage.

"Pelant drained Hodgins' bank accounts." Booth huffed out a breath in irritation of the reminder of one more thing that Pelant had done to them collectively.

Max raised an eyebrow. "So he did this for spite?"

Hodgins shook his head. "Not exactly. He used it for leverage. We had a trace on him, he had a drone trained on a school in Afghanistan and the only way to stop the wire transfer was to break off the connection." He had no regrets about the sacrifice of the moeny

"Which of course you didn't do because you're the kind of guy who values people over money." Max knew he liked Hodgins for a reason.

"Yeah." Hodgins looked determined. "But there has to be a way to trace the transfer. I'm not sure why we didn't pursue it before."

"Because it's not easy." Angela had no doubt that it could be done, but she was also afraid that if they started down that path, Pelant would know it sooner than they could crack the code.

"Well isn't that why we're here?" Cam chimed in. She was tired of being at a disadvantage. They were the best at what they did, well collectively that was true, and they were here to fight back.

"The thing that Pelant has been very effective at is making all of us second guess how good we are. He's made us flinch. We need to ignore his bluff and keep pushing forward." Sweets knew that they hadn't been working to their highest capabilities for a while now. They were better than that and it was about time they started remembering.

"But he's not bluffing, Sweets." Brennan liked Sweets, but she still hated psychology. "He promised to kill people. I'd say that is a very compelling reason for us to appear as if he still has control of the situation." She certainly didn't want anyone else to die, but they couldn't stay in this stalemate forever. She was the best forensic anthropologist in the world and she wasn't used to people being smarter than she was. She was angry that Pelant had tried to put a wedge between her and Booth more than once, she'd spent three months on the run and now he'd forced their engagement to be broken. If she wanted a happy life with the man she loved, the man who was her daughter's father, they needed to find a way to turn the tables on Pelant.

"You're right, he's not bluffing, but he will continue to raise the stakes until we're so boxed in that we can't do anything." Sweets looked around the room to the others. "Whatever happens, we aren't responsible for what he chooses to do. But more people will die if we don't stop him. He's a sociopath, he has no conscience. His moral compass is whatever furthers his current agenda."

"Sweets is right." Booth felt duped for falling into Pelant's manipulation, that they all had fallen into it and he was pissed. "And so is Hodgins. Our best bet for tracking him down is to track the money. Once we know where the money went, we can tell where it's still going. He's arrogant enough to assume that if we haven't tried to track it before now, that we won't do it at all." All they needed was a single simple slip up by Pelant to hone in on him and take him down.

"It's going to take a while." Angela was up to the task, but she didn't want to promise that she was going to be able to do this overnight. At least they wouldn't need a warrant to look into the the accounts that Hodgins was the primary on, that would simplify things a little bit. "And there is no guarantee that he hasn't gotten some program monitoring any inquiries into those transactions." She let out a deep sigh. "This could tip our hand to him."

"And it might just work." Max chimed in. "Pelant is nothing but a sadistic bully who wants everyone to think that he's better than they are." He waved his hand dismissively. "What is wrong with all of you? You're better than he is."

"Max is right." Brennan nodded. "We are the best there is. We may have had some setbacks, but if we act together we can beat him." They had to beat him. "Angela, you found a way to prove that Pelant altered that video footage. You can trace the money."

Angela smiled at Brennan's trust in her. "Thanks, Sweetie, but it took a while to do that. I'm good. I'm really good, I'm just afraid that Pelant might be a little better and a lot faster." She didn't doubt that it could be done, but she feared that they might run out of time before they got there.

Cam shook her head. "He's only better and faster because he's the one writing the script. You're the one who can read the clues and figure out the direction he's heading. You can do this. We all can do this."

"Cam is right." Brennan looked determined. "We've solved complicated crimes before. The difference with this one is that we are his target. He's using us like chess pieces. We have to stop playing his game." If they stopped participating in this madness, it was the only way it was going to stop.

Booth's jaw was set. "Whatever resources you need to do this, Angela, you'll have them, but I think we need to run this so we look like we're out of the loop and it's someone else within the FBI doing the inquiries on the wire transfers. As long as it looks like we aren't touching this, it'll buy us more time."

"Yes. Thank you, Booth." Angela looked around the room at her coconspirators and smiled determinedly. "We're going to get him."


	4. Chapter 4

"We've got him." Angela was surprised that it had taken far less time to trace the money trail than any of them had thought. Bringing a forensic accounting specialist and a fraud investigator at the IRS under the umbrella of a greater FBI investigation had narrowed things down considerably and with that, she was able to crack the code wide open. Pelant it seemed had a habit of making the simple appear overly complicated.

"Where is he?" Brennan glanced over at Booth, measuring his reaction to the news.

Angela glanced up from her computer where they had gathered in her office. They were well out of the confines of the secrecy of Limbo. "He's in Montclair, Virginia. I'll have the address in a minute."

"The son of a bitch. That's just outside of Quantico." Booth narrowed his eyes in determination as Angela provided the address, and then he made the call that would set things in motion. They had a very small window to get to Pelant before he was on to them. Of course the mission of the FBI was to take the fugitive alive if at all possible, but Booth hoped not too secretly that the bastard was taken out in a hail of bullets. He'd much rather have desk duty during an officer involved shooting investigation or be put on administrative leave than to feel like he was always going to have to watch over his shoulder at the possibility that his happiness with Bones was going to be snatched away by Pelant. No, it would be a good day if Pelant died. His arrogance at essentially hiding right under their noses would be his undoing.

"Booth, be careful." Brennan's voice caught as he glanced over at her.

"Always." He stepped over to her, gathered her in his arms and kissed her soundly before pulling away and striding off purposefully.

* * *

An hour later with warrant in hand, the address that Angela had identified had a host of armored vehicles and SWAT attired FBI agents converging on it as the sun was setting. Tactically speaking, Pelant had picked an ideal spot. A large bank-owned estate, it was set well off the road, buffered by a band of large trees, with a fenced perimeter and a security system complete with sweeping security cameras, which appeared to be active. Despite their level of preparation, it was quite likely that he knew they were coming before they had the estate in view.

* * *

Cam stepped in to Angela's office where she and Brennan were waiting. "Have we heard anything?" There was a certain level of tension in the air knowing that they felt like they had this one opportunity to get the upper hand with Pelant.

Brennan shook her head. "Nothing so far." She held up here cell phone as if to indicate that she wasn't going to let go of it until they did.

* * *

The tactical team breached a fence at the side of the estate as agents flanked out around the perimeter, snipers ready in case Pelant had some idiot idea about coming out with guns blazing. It was eerily quiet as they inched their way towards the back door and waited for the command to break the door down.

* * *

"I have a strange feeling about this." Angela's brows furrowed as she continued to use her hacking skills to trace where more of the money had been siphoned off to. There was no doubt that Pelant had directed some of the funds at the estate the FBI tactical team was converging on, but it also seemed that there might be more to the story.

* * *

BOOM! The door crashed in and flash bang grenades were tossed in.

"FBI! FBI!" Controlled chaos ensued as the agents swarmed into the large house, fanning out to search each room.

"Clear!"

As each room was entered and then searched, the same call came out.

"Clear!"

"All clear! House is empty, sir.

* * *

"He's not there." Brennan tucked her phone into her pocket and reacted with concern as she looked around the Angela's office where the most of the members of the Limbo Conspiracy had gathered.

Concern flickered in their expressions.

Sweets was the first to respond. "So it's going down the way we thought." He wasn't the best and brightest in his field for nothing. Like the rest of them, he had allowed himself to be set off kilter by Pelant's antics and once they'd all stepped back, regrouped and refocused, things had become far more clear about how to deal with him.

"I should have killed him when I had the chance." To his dying day, Jack Hodgins would regret that he hadn't taken Pelant out when he'd literally had him by the throat.

"Don't say that, Jack." Angela was insistent. "You're a good man. Pelant is a psycho."

"More correctly, he's a sociopath." Sweets decided that he'd better stop while he was ahead when the rest of the group glanced his way with one of those looks. He raised his hands in surrender. "But I'm good with psycho."

"So we wait then." Cam would rather have sent them all home before now, but they hadn't wanted to raise suspicion and it was a calculated risk they had to take. Besides, she'd sent most everyone else home under the guise that it was a mandated furlough day because of government cutbacks she'd just learned about.

"That is the plan." Brennan hoped that they were correct and that the diversion of sending an FBI tactical team to the house at the end of the money trail would flush Pelant out and put him right where they wanted him.

"Dr. Brennan, I think I've found something you should see…" Wendell's words trailed off as he walked into Angela's office on his search for Brennan only to find that the expressions on everyone's faces made him stop in his tracks. "I can come back." He wasn't sure if he was intruding or if he was about to get some bad news.

"No, Wendell, stay." Cam forced a smile that she didn't feel and then her eyes widened as she saw movement out near the entrance. She quickly waved her arm at the group. "It's go time."

"I thought you wanted me to stay." Wendell looked a little confused.

"No time to explain, just get down and stay down." Hodgins yanked on Wendell's arm and pulled him with the rest of them out of sight as Brennan eased her way towards the doorway of Angela's office. She was spotted all too quickly.

"Dr. Brennan." The far too bright sounding voice of Christopher Pelant echoed as he called out in the nearly empty lab. "You really should do something to upgrade the security here. For such a first rate institution, things are really lax. I mean, you never know exactly who might just wander in off the street."

"You mean a deranged serial killer such as yourself." Brennan felt her heart beating wildly in her chest as she stood there. She had hoped to be in her own office by now where she knew where everything was instinctively, but Angela's office had fewer windows and more places to take cover should he be heavily armed, although It didn't appear that he was.

"Oh, you flatter me too much. I'm not a serial killer, I'm a patriot. There seems to be some confusion about my purpose." He boldly stepped towards her, his eyes sweeping the room momentarily before he was satisfied that this was going just as he wanted.

"I think I'm very clear about your purpose. We all are." Brennan spoke more boldly than she felt, but it was important to draw him in so there would be no question as to what happened in these next few minutes.

"Oh, you mean you and your fellow scientists." He let out a laugh. "I do give you credit for being very clever, but while I'm standing here, the FBI is conducting a raid on a location where they seem certain they'll find me. No thanks to Ms. Montenegro's rudimentary hacking skills. By the time Agent Booth comes back with the cavalry to save you it's going to be too late." He lips twisted into a sickening smirk and took another step towards her, reaching into his jacket and pulling out a Glock. His purpose was all too clear.

"You're not as smart as you think you are." Brennan's eyes narrowed at the man who had tried to make their lives a living hell.

Pelant looked at her oddly for the briefest second as the sound of a rifle cocking registered in his ears and he realized that he'd miscalculated.

"Make one move, Pelant, and I will blow your head off." Booth's authoritative voice broke through the deafening silence as he and half a dozen agents stepped out from where they'd been hiding.

Anger flashed across Pelant's face and he nearly growled as he lunged at Brennan in an attempt to use her as a human shield. "Say goodbye to Dr. Brennan, Agent Booth."

Those were the last words the bastard spoke as Brennan dove for the floor to get away from him and a single rifle shot went off, hitting Pelant squarely in the throat just as he was trying to squeeze off a round himself. He was dead before he hit the floor.

"Bones!" Booth secured his weapon and rushed over to her, even as he saw her getting up, to make sure she was really okay. "Bones!"

"I'm okay, Booth, I'm okay." She melted into his embrace as the rest of Limbo Conspiracy spilled out into the open and the other agents secured the scene.

There would be an officer involved shooting investigation, but for now it was all over. Christopher Pelant was dead.


End file.
